


peace, old mariner

by sadsparties



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Afterlife, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23374459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsparties/pseuds/sadsparties
Summary: They will say that he had gone to rest peacefully, that he had laid his head on his lonely pillow and closed his eyes, never to wake again. They will say it was a mercy, for he was old and his heart was broken.At the end of his life, James Clark Ross meets three ghosts.
Relationships: (IMPLIED), Captain Francis Crozier & Sir James Clark Ross, Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Lady Ann Ross/Sir James Clark Ross
Comments: 24
Kudos: 59
Collections: the terror decameron





	peace, old mariner

They will say that he had gone to rest peacefully, that he had laid his head on his lonely pillow and closed his eyes, never to wake again. They will say it was a mercy, for he was old and his heart was broken.

But James Clark Ross is an explorer, and instead of eternal sleep, he finds himself in that undiscovered country where all souls go, to a spotless deck and the bite of ice in the air.

He is confused at first, baffled, but he supposes that if there was a turning point in his life, it would be this, when he had departed from a regular sort of sailor into an explorer. He would know the smell of Baffin Bay anywhere, could recognize this ship by the rigging in her masts, can still. 

A figure stands at the stern, bending over a dip circle. This too James would know anywhere, having caused him such pain and grief over the decades. James is much advanced now, hair tinged grey and a paunch in his stomach. To see this man again, as men nearer in age than they had ever been, fills him with an empathy that he had not granted whilst living.

“Uncle,” he says.

Sir John Ross turns from his readings and faces his nephew. There was a time when James could have painted this countenance from memory, did so once, when little Tommy wanted to dabble in watercolours. But the face he sees at this moment proves his recollection ill-made. Both uncle and nephew had changed in their years apart, their common failure weighing on their conscience.

“Bah,” his uncle huffs. “So you’ve finally decided to turn up, eh?”

It may be the friendliest greeting he had ever given James. James comes closer and studies the mess of lines that make up his uncle’s observations. “What do the instruments say?” he asks.

“Same as ever,” his uncle says. “It’s colder. We’re pointing both northward and west. The wind points starboard. Or so my acting master tells me.”

And therein it lies, laid out finally, the wound in the very centre of the miles between them. His uncle was far from a good scientist, nor a good sailor. An admission of this, even in private, contrary to his pamphlets—it was all James had ever wanted. 

“You weren’t entirely right, old boy,” his uncle adds. “You ought to know that by now.”

“I do,” James says. “I do, Captain.” 

His uncle huffs again, but there is a small smile now. James has not called him ‘captain’ since they were in the  _ Isabella _ . After that, it had been ‘uncle’, often with disdain. During their long interlude in Boothia Peninsula, James had never called him ‘captain’, never offered his deference.

Pride was always his largest flaw.

“Why are you here, Uncle John?” he asks. “Have you come to lead me to the Gates?”

“Bah!” His uncle lets out a sharp laugh. “Don’t expect that from me, boy.” John Ross gazes at him, eyes piercing, but there is something different there than before. A warmth. “I don’t love you that much.”

“What did I tell you, darling, about imbibing before sleeping?” 

James hears it just as the cold of the Arctic gives way to warm summer. Soft arms round on his shoulders from behind, and James’s breath catches at his throat. He buries his nose into dainty fingers, clenches them so fiercely it ought to have elicited a gasp.

“You said—” He pauses, lets out a shaky breath. “You said it will be the death of me.”

Ann’s figure rounds the wingback chair and James immediately takes her in his arms. He does not know where they are, has not bothered to take a look, but he feels the softness of the cushion where he sits, feels the cotton of Ann’s dress beneath his grasping fists. It is her favourite, the one she’d worn at little Jamie’s christening. 

Her palms lift his head up. “Hello, my love.”

“Ann,” he whispers, reverent. “Annie.”

Ann brushes a lock of hair from his face. The gesture is so familiar, so dearly missed, that he does not dare breathe, lest a stray wind send this vision away. She is so lovely, so glowing, so  _ healthy _ , that it summons tears, left to do their warm course down his cheeks without even a blink from James. Now there is only Ann, Ann and her sweet smile, and her doting gaze, and the crinkle around her eyes that appears with her laughter.

“I hope you have not been overlong in waiting,” she says. James shakes his head. “Five years is five years too long.”

She sits on his lap, and James finally takes note of where they are. The furnishings are familiar, though they seem newer than when he last saw them.

“We first met here while you were visiting your sister between voyages,” Ann says. “I’d dropped by for a lark and saw you sitting alone.”

“I wanted you the moment I saw you,” James says, not for the first time. “When you returned my feelings, I was ready to go against heaven itself so that we could be together.” He presses her hand to his chest. “I ought to have gone after you did. There was nothing else for me prior to your leaving, Annie.”

“Not even the children?”

James heaves a sigh, slow and deep. Here he must confess a painful and selfish truth. “They reminded me so much of you that to see them living happily only broke my heart.”

“I know, darling,” she reassures him, “but there was also something else.” Ann presses their foreheads together, a loose curl from her hair tickling James’s cheek. “You had to be there for it,” she says, “and so you should not have followed me. Not for two years at least.”

“Ann?”

“You could have gone with me, but half of you would always remain there, always waiting. And until you found your answer you had to live.”

The land beneath his head is a bed of dry, brittle rock. The sky above is so bright it ought to hurt his eyes. James sits up and scans the horizon. Ann’s visage is still fresh in his mind, like a daguerreotype half-developed. He watches as a gull swoops in, its beak devouring a crawler as it leaps back onto the air and disappears into the landscape. The rocks stretch as far as he can see, an endless sea of dirty white.

“It’s bleak, I know, but I’d rather this than the ice.”

James whips his gaze to the side and there he is, sitting where there was nothing but air mere moments ago, the ghost that James had to wait for. 

“Good god! Frank!”

James throws his arms around his dearest friend. He envelopes him in a bear-like vice that threatens to upend them both. “Frank... Frank...” James keeps saying. It is all he can think of to say. Later, there will be more, but at present there is only relief and gratefulness. The beginning of absolution.

Francis embraces him in return, and together they engage in a heartfelt battle of who is to pull one against whom. “Where the hell have you been?” James cries against Francis’s shoulder. The fur is ragged and itchy, but he has never felt anything so comforting. He has so many questions, so many that have haunted him while he lapped up the dregs of a bottle, but he cannot figure where to start.

Francis’s fingers fleet through James’s hair and settle at the back of his neck. “What does it matter now, when we have both found ourselves here?” 

With great reluctance, James eases off and takes in Francis’s visage. His brow, the one that rose so often at James’s tomfooleries, is split by an old scar. His hair has gone completely white, bleached both by sun and long periods of hardship. And his eyes, once as blue as the insides of a glacier, have become paled with age and wisdom. What did it matter, indeed? Francis is right, he is always right, and James has missed his certainty, his company.  _ In truth, I am sadly lonely. _

“Who was it for you?” James asks. “At the end.”

Francis chuckles, a soft huffing of breath that is valuable in its rarity. “Sir John Franklin, if you can believe it.”

“I can,” he says. “It was my uncle for me.”

Francis nods in understanding. “And another,” he adds. “A friend I didn’t deserve nor expected to make, whom I loved—love—dearly.”

James holds on to Francis’s hand. His other arm ends on a stump now, another mystery, but strangely the sight is not distressing. There are so few things to be distressed about, in this place, wherever it was.

“Qikiqtaq,” Francis offers. He pronounces it without second thought, like the word was no longer foreign to him. “The northwest point of it. Do you remember?”

Of course, the farthest west that James had sledged during his four-year sojourn, the place he had called Point Victory. “Ann insisted I had to wait,” he says. “For two years at least. And then your record was found.” 

Francis squeezes his hand. “Don’t let’s speak of it anymore, James dear.”

“But what now, Francis. What next?”

Francis gets to his feet and pulls James up. It reminds him of another time, their roles reversed, when Francis had misjudged the lapping of waves and jumped off the boat at the wrong moment, and James had had to pull him up from the shore lest they both fell to the cold waters. They had climbed over sharp rocks, giddy as schoolboys, and planted the flag as they took possession of an island under the Queen’s name. 

There is no such glory in this place, but instead there is a restrained sort of serenity, like a still dove at the periphery of your eye. They stand toe-to-toe, James with his oldest and dearest friend, in a vast landscape barren of life and so full of vanquished souls. 

Francis claps a hand on James’s shoulder.

“Now, brother,” he says. “Now there’s peace.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ann died in 1857. News of the discovery of the Victory Point note reached England in 1859. JCR died in 1862.


End file.
